Issues

Political Issues

The use of road rule enforcement cameras (red light cameras) is certainly contentious. There are a number of legal issues which arise as a result depending on local laws and the procedures used by the enforcing bodies. There are political issues associated with camera schemes which are often unpopular with motorists and in many areas motorists have lobbied against camera schemes. Finally, there are concerns as to whether road rule enforcement cameras genuinely do improve safety.

In a number of jurisdictions, there was a degree of controversy surrounding the deployment of increasing numbers of speed and red-light cameras beginning in the late 1980s. Police and government were accused of "Big Brother tactics" in over-monitoring of public roads, and of "revenue raising" in applying cameras in ways to increase government revenue rather than improve road safety.

Often when camera deployment has been accompanied by large scale advertising campaigns explaining the justification and planned effects of such cameras, proponents argue that the public has accepted their use on a large scale. In other places, public responses have included spectacular vandalism of camera systems including attacks with explosives, tractors, cutting equipment, incendiary devices, rifles, and even attacks on camera operators, as forms of civil disobedience and protest.

 Sign notifying drivers of a red light camera in Scarborough, Ontario
Sign notifying drivers of a red light camera in Scarborough, Ontario.
In the United States, camera enforcement has been controversial since the first speed camera system issued a ticket in Friendswood, Texas in 1986 and La Marque, Texas in 1987. Neither program lasted more than a few months before public pressure forced the systems to be dropped. Three times in the United States, cameras have been rejected after public votes. In Peoria, Arizona voters were the first to reject cameras by a 2-1 margin in 1991 followed by a similar vote in Batavia, Illinois in 1992. Anchorage, Alaska rejected cameras in a 1997 referendum. In Virginia legislature declined to reauthorize its camera enforcement law, and all red light cameras in the state were deactivated on July 1, 2005 after a study showed they were ineffective in reducing accidents. In 2002 the state of Hawaii experimented with photo radar vans but they were withdrawn months later due to public outcry. Arkansas, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin have also enacted prohibitions on photo enforcement. In New York State, red light cameras are allowed in New York City only, but speeding photo radars are illegal (except in toll booths equipped with E-ZPass).

Some U.S. states that formerly allowed only red-light enforcement cameras (but not photo radar speed enforcement cameras), have now approved, or are considering, the implementation of photo radar. The Maryland legislature approved such a program in January 2006. In both 2005 and 2006 the California legislature considered, but did not pass, bills to implement photo radar.

In the province of Ontario, Canada, Mike Harris was among the first to make photo radar a substantial election issue. He abolished the program after being chosen as premier in 1995.

In the UK speed cameras became a contentious political issue after the Department for Transport introduced Safety Camera Partnerships. This lead to the installation of a large number of cameras and enforced that camera revenues were used only for the installation and maintenance of cameras and the staff associated with this . In 2004, the Conservative Party accused the government of "waging a war on drivers" and announced that, if it came to power, it would review the effectiveness of all cameras in England and Wales, scrapping those which were ineffective.

In July 2005 The Times reported "The Government is blocking the installation of nearly 500 new speed cameras amid signs that ministers are beginning to doubt the effectiveness of the devices." ("Speed camera U-turn as 500 sites rejected", The Times, 15/7/2005) In December 2005 The Times reported "The safety benefits of speed cameras have been exaggerated, the Government admitted yesterday as it called a halt to their proliferation. Cameras do save lives, but far fewer than have been claimed." ("Speed camera benefits overrated", The Times, 16/12/2005)

In the Albertan capital of Edmonton in February 2006, a scandal erupted when it was revealed that two police officers accepted bribes from private contractors who received lucrative contracts to provide photo radar in Edmonton. The officers and contractor involved now face criminal charges that remain before the courts. In August 2006, a similar scandal erupted in St. Peters, Missouri after the mayor was indicted by a federal grand jury for soliciting payment from a private contractor in return for his approval of an ordinance allowing the use of red light cameras.



Legal Issues

Various legal issues arise from such cameras and the laws involved in how cameras can be placed and what evidence is necessary to prosecute a driver varies considerably in different legal systems (U.S. DOT Red Light Camera Systems Operational Guidelines). In some areas the cameras themselves have been ruled illegal.

One issue is the potential conflict of interest when private contractors are paid a commission based on the number of tickets they are able to issue. Pictures from the San Diego red light camera systems were ruled inadmissible as court evidence in September 2001 (Judge's ruling). The judge said that the "total lack of oversight" and "method of compensation" made evidence from the cameras "so untrustworthy and unreliable that it should not be admitted".

Another common issue is a challenge to the accuracy of the cameras. Cameras which give false positive results can cause legal issues. For example, a speed camera which reports the wrong speed may result in an attempted prosecution of a driver who was not speeding. In particular the cameras have often been accused of photographing the wrong car.

Some legal issues arise from the use of digital images instead of film, with claims that digital images could be created artificially. In August 2005, in Sydney, Australia a speed camera photograph was challenged on the basis that an MD5 signature was insufficient to protect the photograph from tampering. Magistrate Lawrence Lawson demanded that the Roads and Traffic Authority produce an expert witness who could prove the photographs were tamper-proof and the RTA was unable to provide such evidence. The defendant was found innocent and awarded court costs.

In some U.S. jurisdictions (primarily California, Arizona, Illinois) the law says that the camera needs to obtain a photo of the driver's face, of sufficient quality to convince the judge that he is convicting the actual driver, not someone else who had access to the vehicle. Some California cities send registered owners a document that looks like a real camera ticket (but in fact has no legal weight) in an effort to get the owner to identify the driver responsible for the offense.

The UK operates a similar system, where the owners of vehicles photographed on camera are contacted with a 'Notice of Intended Prosecution' (NIP) requiring them to provide the name and address of the driver. Several drivers are challenging this under the Human Rights Act 1998 on the grounds that this amounted to a 'compulsory confession' under the European Convention of Human Rights they could not be required to give evidence against themselves, that the police in obtaining this confession are not acting in accordance with the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) and that since the camera partnerships that include the police, local authorities, Magistrates Courts Service (MCS) and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) are not independent, having a joint financial interest in the fine revenue and therefore defendants do not get a fair trial. Although their plea was initially granted by a judge, it was later overturned, and was considered serious enough breach of human rights by the human rights campaign group Liberty that this matter is to be heard in the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), and the European Court of Justice (ECJ). Also there are questions as to whether or not government is contravening their citizen's rights under the Bill of Rights 1686 and the Magna Carta the founding principles of UK's democratic constitution.

Other U.S. states and provinces of Canada such as Alberta are "owner liability" jurisdictions where the issue of driver identification is avoided by not issuing demerit points for camera infractions. Instead, the registered owner of the vehicle must pay all such fines regardless of whether he was driving at the time of the offense. Most U.S. jurisdictions release the owner from liability if he signs a form identifying the actual driver and that individual pays the fine. However, the resulting lack of long-term repercussions for repeated photo radar offenses has been criticized by some as giving a "license to speed" to those who can more easily afford speeding fines.



Issues of effectiveness

In the UK the effectiveness issue has become particularly contentious since the introduction of Safety Camera Partnerships. Studies in the UK have provided analysis of the effects of speed cameras deployed by Safety Camera Partnerships.

 red-light camera, speed cameras.
Red light camera in Springfield, Ohio, USA
An initial three-year study commissioned by the Department for Transport (DfT) showed that vehicle speeds dropped by seven percent at sites where cameras were installed and claimed that "at camera sites, there was also a reduction of over 100 fatalities per annum (40% fewer). There were 870 fewer people killed or seriously injured and 4,030 fewer personal injury collisions per annum. There was a clear correlation between reductions in speed and reductions in PICs" (personal injury collisions). The three year DfT report was criticised in some quarters for giving only a small amount of attention to the phenomenon of regression to the mean (RTM). Since the cameras were placed at sites where a high number of accidents had been observed, a lower number of accidents might be expected in subsequent years simply by random chance. Professor Mervyn Stone of the The Department of Statistical Science at University College London was commissioned by the BBC Radio Four Today Programme to write a report [1] about UK speed cameras and also Traffic Calming. His report criticises some of the methodologies used in some speed camera studies (including the DfT three year report) and in particular he mentions the RTM effect.

A followup four-year independent study commissioned by the DfT concluded "after allowing for the long-term trend, but without allowing for selection effects (such as regression-to-mean) there was a 22% reduction in personal injury collisions (PICs) at sites after cameras were introduced. Overall 42% fewer people were killed or seriously injured. At camera sites, there was also a reduction of over 100 fatalities per annum (32% fewer). There were 1,745 fewer people killed or seriously injured and 4,230 fewer personal injury collisions per annum in 2004." In addition, the four year report includes statistical modeling of the RTM effect based on a reduced set of camera sites for which suitable data was available. Rural roads were excluded from the RTM modeling, because of difficulties establishing representative models for such roads, although the report does state it is likely that RTM effects will be larger for rural roads because expected collision frequencies tend to be lower than on urban roads. The report urges caution in drawing too strong conclusions from a small data set. Based on the RTM modeling undertaken the report suggests that for personal injury collisions (non-serious collisions resulting in injuries) a 16.2% reduction in injuries was due to the cameras, a 6.7% reduction was due to regression to the mean and a 7.9% reduction was due to the general downward trend in accidents over the period. For fatal and serious collisions, the modeling estimated a 10.4% reduction in such collisions due to the cameras, a 34.8% reduction due to regression to the mean and a 9.3% reduction due to general downward trends in accident rates.

A 2006 DfT report "Contributory factors to road accidents" uses STATS19 data to analyse accidents have speed as a contributory factor. The factors "exceeding the speed limit" or "going too fast for conditions" were judged by officers at the scene of road accidents. It was suggested that "exceeding the speed limit" would be marked as a cause if the officer had reason to believe from external evidence (for example "skid marks on the road") that the driver was doing so. Exceeding the speed limit was said to be a factor in 12% of fatal road accidents and 5% of all road accidents.

An independent UK-based controlled study uses STATS19 data to show that speed cameras are effective at reducing accidents and injuries but added that wider deployment would improve their effectiveness.

Two 2006 UK studies have questioned the accuracy of STATS19 data when used to look at serious injury rates since there is ambiguity in whether an injury is judged serious or minor and the UK police records do not match hospital admission records. The first study "Changes in safety on England’s roads: analysis of hospital statistics", published by the British Medical Journal[4] concludes that "the overall fall seen in police statistics for non-fatal road traffic injuries probably represents a fall in completeness of reporting of these injuries". The second study "Under-reporting of Road Casualties – Phase 1", published by the DfT[5], recommends that reports should not rely solely on STATS19 injury data (none of the reports mentioned do).

In the United States, questions of effectiveness have centered on the more common red light cameras. A number of government-sponsored studies have addressed the question of whether, on balance, the devices produce a safety benefit. A U.S. Safety Evaluation of Red-Light Cameras, for example, found that red light cameras led to an increase in the number of rear-end collisions. The study applied estimates from a 1997 study of the cost of accidents based on severity to conclude the cameras yielded a modest overall cost benefit from a reduction in more expensive angle collisions. A Virginia Department of Transportation study of the long-term effect of camera enforcement in the state also found an increase in rear end collisions and an overall increase in the number of accidents causing injuries. The report recommended further study of the issue to determine whether the severity of the eliminated red light running crashes was greater than that of the induced rear-end crashes.

In May 2001 Dick Armey, then Majority Leader of the United States House of Representatives, issued a report suggesting that a more effective alternative to red light cameras would be to increase the yellow traffic light warning times. He suggested red light cameras exploited intersections where signal timing was shorter than necessary for some motorists to come to a complete stop (July 2001 U.S. House testimony). A 2004 Texas Department of Transportation study found, "crashes decrease with an increase in yellow interval duration and a reduction in speed limit." After 1.0 second was added to the yellow signal timing at test intersections, accidents dropped by 35 to 40%. This compares with a 6.4% reduction for "area-wide officer enforcement of intersection traffic control devices... during the time of the enforcement activity".



This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Red-light_camera".